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More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

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Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#741

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

tejtm wrote: post #696
RC_ITR wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of a political meme that welding is the key to everyone getting a middle class lifestyle, because good welders get paid a good amount. The joke ofc being that there is a 'shortage' of welders because it's actually very hard to become a good welder. If, somehow, we got a bunch of people to become really good welders, it would just go to being a low paid profession.

sounds just like programming ... I know! let's invent object oriented welding to lower the barriers to being able to make a weld that holds.

If you're welding without regard for the objects or their orientation you're probably going to have a bad time.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#742

Post by kube-system »

indymike wrote: post #314

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

I think this view is indicative of a massive failure of cultural expectations.

At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things.

The fact that an average 1970's college graduate was highly employable has nothing to do with those colleges having good vocational training programs, and everything to do with selection bias of those who attended and the economics of the time.

If you need vocational skills, you should enroll in a vocational program.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#743

Post by eli_gottlieb »

kube-system wrote: post #742
indymike wrote: post #314

There are three problems that colleges need to fix. 1) Skilled trades pay better than most bachelor's degree track jobs. My kids can make more money with a six month apprenticeship than they will with all but a few 4 year degrees. If you can drive a forklift, you can make $45K/yr... which is identical to what an firsty year teacher makes. 2) There are better options than college for many. One of my daughters did a si…

I think this view is indicative of a massive failure of cultural expectations. At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things. The fact that an average 1970's college graduate was highly employable has nothing to do with those colleges having good vocational training programs, and eve…

>At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things.

The point where they started taking in about half of each rising generation as freshman instead of 5%.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#744

Post by nfw2 »

pb7 wrote: post #725
nfw2 wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having children as soon as possible may not be a win, but having a house surely is. How could owning a valuable and necessary asset not be considered a win?

Because owning a house makes you reluctant to move to pursue great life opportunities, some of which are career based that would earn you more money over your lifetime. Of course that has changed with the adoption of remote work but let's be honest, no one saw that coming.

Owning a house doesn't necessarily make you reluctant to move to pursue other opportunities somewhere else. Renting or just re-selling the house is always an option.

Also, anything good in your life would make you reluctant to move somewhere else. But you wouldn't say, for example, that having a significant other is bad because it makes you reluctant to move.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#745

Post by Terr_ »

welshwelsh wrote: post #655
silisili wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 1, at least in the US, it's very dependent on market and path. I have two family members who have been pipefitters for 20 years. Both make more than I do as a software engineer. Another is a doctor, and makes more than they do. But another does boat repair, and makes more than the doctor. If the last decade is any indication, skilled labor - especially those not afraid to own their own business, are set to make a…

I'm sure there are some pipefitters who make a lot of money, but we should go by averages, not outliers. The average for "Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters" is $56,330 per year, according to the BLS. For "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers" it's $110,140 per year. For "Physicians and Surgeons," it's $208,000 per year. We also need to consider that running your own business is a lot of…

> but we should go by averages, not outliers.

Or to be a little pedantic, by mean, not average. When Bill Gates walks into a dive bar the "average person" is temporarily is a billionaire.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#746

Post by protomyth »

spullara wrote: post #712
prirun wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the benefits of office jobs is that you get high pay, stable hours, relatively low stress and get to work in an air-conditioned room. So I would still prefer that over skilled trades even if the pay was the same. One of the downsides is your job can be easily outsourced to a country with lower wages, and with remote work here to stay (IMO), that is going to be even easier than before. There are no remote plu…

If we can get AR/VR into the mainstream I bet there will be remote plumbers that essentially pilot you to diagnose and fix things.

I'm sure the local governments and their inspectors will have a bit of a say in that.

AR/VR does not make one experienced.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#747

Post by lapsedacademic »

reilly3000 wrote: post #399
ravenstine wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read a goddamn book. > [...] to wholly discount its importance is capitalist orthodoxy Touched a nerve, eh? You have no clue what books I've read or how many. I didn't "wholly discount" the importance of so-named classical liberal arts. But there aren't many good reasons for putting one's self into debt to get a degree in such things. Be honest, liberal arts isn't heart surgery. Liberal arts can be learned for free…

> Touched a nerve, eh? That you did heh... I am a pretty ardent advocate for journalism and the people who do it, paid or unpaid. I've also worked in digital advertising and communications, and even spent a semester as an adjunct teaching a mostly vocational course in the same, so I suppose the $1500 they paid me in 2014 makes me a semi-interested party. That said, I've also spent the intervening time with self-direc…

-1M for a religion degree from Talmudical Seminary of Bobov... where tuition after aid is $7,549.

...how do you even spend $1M on a religion degree that costs less than $10k/yr?!

Surely this is just actual straight-up white-and-black fraud, or some sort of weird data entry error, right?

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#748

Post by kube-system »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #743
kube-system wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this view is indicative of a massive failure of cultural expectations. At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things. The fact that an average 1970's college graduate was highly employable has nothing to do with those colleges having good vocational training programs, and eve…

>At what point in the past 50 years did we start expecting academic liberal arts institutions to start churning out people with vocational skills? These are entirely different things. The point where they started taking in about half of each rising generation as freshman instead of 5%.

And whose fault is that? It's the parents and advisors that said "go to college and you'll get a good job" when they weren't cut out for it (or didn't even want to do it). It's the voters who pushed for students loans "to give all of our students a chance".

If you give people who aren't cut out to do something, a chance to do that thing, it's expected that more people will fail. We are now living with the predictable result of pushing unmotivated and uninterested kids to "just try it out", and handing them a credit card to do it with.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#749

Post by causalmodels »

ryanhuff wrote: post #675
HWR_14 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just loans, it's COVID. If I were college-age and I were planning on going to college I would certainly do one of two things. I would postpone college until the COVID issues died down -or- I would use the fewer applicants to get into a more prestigious school banking on a better 3 year experience (out of 4) starting in the fall of 2022 and more impressive degree going forward. Either way, I can imagine admit…

Prestigious schools are seeing record numbers of applications, and record low in acceptance rates. If there is a hit in college attendance, its not happening at the top of the food chain.

True, but prestigious schools are playing games. For example, my alma mater is currently waiving the application fee for students they know will not get in simply so they can reject them. It is incredibly fucked up.

Re: More than 1M fewer students are in college, the lowest numbers in 50 years

#750

Post by jmrm »

VikingCoder wrote: post #169
bagacrap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loans are exactly why the colleges were able to continue jacking up the prices. As with homes, people will pay as much as institutions are willing to loan them. In both cases the currently low interest rates allow the loan principal to be much higher (given that folks calculate cost based on recurring payments). If you remove the student loan system then tuition would become cheaper. However that does unfairly im…

Here's what I don't get - Where the hell is the money _going_? Are Colleges and Universities pocketing the money? Are they publicly traded and distributing dividends? Are they building rockets? I know some of it goes back to financial aid, and some goes to football coaches... But we're talking about so much freaking money, and I just can't visualize where it's going.

Adding to all the other comments: Universities in the US are profit companies that pay taxes like if they were charity NGOs
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